Giant Robot Magazine Talk: Eric Nakamura and Martin Wong

Mar 26, 2014

(podcast of the talk at bottom)

Giant Robot Presented Tales of Print March 23rd, 2014.

I doubt there could ever be closure to Giant Robot magazine unless the door gets completely slammed, meaning no shop or gallery. Maybe I’d have to drop dead for that to happen. But then again, there are huge parts of my life, especially in new projects where Giant Robot magazine is a completely unknown part of my past. It’s amazing how many folks don’t know it. Then, there are moments when it’s brought back to life for an instant.

It’s great to speak with Martin about a period totaling 16 years of our lives. How can you do that in a window of two hours? You can’t, but you can fly through ideas with the broadest of strokes. We showed some slides of magazine stories from different topics, including travel, art, cinema, food, and history. Contributors, volunteers, friends, family, and past cover artists came through. It was nice to see their faces. The talk went for a little over an hour and a half and frankly, it went by a little too quick. There’s so much to say, so much minutiae that you can’t remember on the spot, and so little time. It was a long road to issue 68 and although 69 isn’t happening soon, you’ll never know what might happen. It’s one of those, “it can happen, but should it?”

A few questions came up and those were always nice to hear. Gladly, again our friends were the ones asking. It was fun to go over things again and even in this post, it’s hard to sum things up. Maybe it’s best to let them be changing memories, so that it lasts infinitely. Like that final episode of Lost, I wish I could flash sideways and hang out again.

Meanwhile, the 20 Year exhibition at GR2 continues, and the line up of artists might be one of the greatest ever, but part of that, is thanks to the legacy of Giant Robot. Imagine, among the first to join in when I sent out a call to artists? It was literally Takashi Murakami and Yoshitomo Nara. Both of whom I haven’t heard from in ages, jumped on right away. The many other artists as well, from way back to the final. It’s an honor and it’s great to keep working with many of them who I still see on a regular basis.